James Montgomery

James Montgomery (22 December 1814-6 December 1871) was a Colonel of the US Army during the American Civil War.

Biography
James Montgomery was born in Austinburg, Ohio on 22 December 1814, and he moved to Kentucky in 1837 and to Missouri in 1852, working as a teacher. Montgomery became a fervent abolitionist, and he led Jayhawkers into Kansas to fight against the Border Ruffians during the Bleeding Kansas violence of the 1850s. He fought alongside John Brown, and only a snowstorm in Pennsylvania prevented Montgomery from launching a raid to free Brown from prison in Virginia. On 24 July 1861, he became a colonel of the 3rd Kansas Infantry of the US Army, and he became known as an anti-slavery zealot, sacking Osceola in Missouri and carrying out raids in South Carolina and Georgia at the head of a regiment of South Carolina African-Americans in 1863. In September 1864, months after a defeat at Olustee, Montgomery resigned his commission and returned to his Linn County, Kansas farm, where he died in 1871.